Grigsby family and Gary Mayor Jerome Prince with new street sign

Gary celebrates John Grigsby with Memorial Garden and honorary street naming

Contributed By:The 411 News

The street sign bearing the name 10th & Taney in Gary will soon be replaced with John Grigsby Street, an honorary naming for the man whose passion for community action and political empowerment endeared him to neighbors and residents across the city.

Wednesday's celebration of the honorary street naming also recognized the Grigsby Family's efforts establishing a block club that is turning vacant land into a green space -- the Grigsby Memorial Garden.

John Grigsby and his wife Theresa raised 3 daughters on Taney, in the Tolleston neighborhood. He was a 20-year precinct committeman and city employee. At the block party, Ragen Hatcher called him a man who shared the vision of her father, Gary's first black mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher.

Grigsby is recognized by many as helping to jumpstart Hatcher's candidacy for mayor. He initiated a drive, garnering thousands of voters' signatures to get Hatcher on the ballot in the 1967 Gary mayoral race.

Grigsby died in 1988.

Speaker after speaker noted how the name change was fitting. Taney Street got its name from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In 1857, his court's Dred Scott decision determined that Scott, a slave, had no right to sue his owner to gain freedom. Many of Taney’s writings and opinions held that once a slave, always a slave.

Sam Love, a Gary historian and poet said history is a process. "We are letting the world know that what happens in Gary has an impact. Hopefully, we are starting a process across the city where that name comes down and eventually the people of Gary get to say what name goes up there. And we can certainly think of someone like the man we celebrate today."

Ragen Hatcher noted that streets west of Broadway in Gary are named after U.S. presidents and many of them had challenging histories with African Americans.

"It's concerning to have a population of people who look like us and have these kinds of names on our streets," Hatcher said. "I can imagine how it feels growing up on a street named after a man who said African Americans didn't have any rights that a white man was bound to respect."

Gary City Court Judge Deidre Monroe, who grew up in Grigsby's precinct, said she didn't know what Taney was about until law school. "But when I was growing up, Taney Street was about your dad," she said to the family. "He worried all of us and did everything he could to get Hatcher elected. We were close knit. Mr. Grigsby knocked on every door, helping get garbage picked up and summer jobs."

Mayor Jerome Prince said, "I stand on the shoulders of efforts by Mr. Grigsby and Mayor Hatcher, men who believed that African Americans could and should hold office in the city of Gary."


Seated Ragen Hatcher, Sam Love, and Mayor Jerome Prince; standing Carla Grigsby McVea, Kasi Grigsby, and Kym Grigsby Mazelle.

Story Posted:10/20/2020